night goggles
Photo: eBay headquarters, San Jose, Calif,. Credit: coolcaesar/Wikipedia
A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said sensitive and stolen military equipment has been discovered selling on eBay and Craigslist.
GAO inspectors posed as buyers and were able to buy more than a dozen restricted military items including; two F-14 fighter jet components, special night vision goggles, army combat uniforms and "enhanced" body armor vests used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"GAO found numerous defense-related items for sale to the highest bidder on eBay and Craiglist," the report said. "A review of policies and procedures for these Web sites determined that there are few safeguards to prevent the sale of sensitive and stolen defense-related items using the sites."
The report though admits the public had acquired the property from the government's own web site. "Our prior reports found that control breakdowns at DOD allowed members of the general public to acquire sensitive defense-related items, including F-14 components, from the Government Liquidation Web site; these items had not been demilitarized properly."
Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist reacted to accusations made by the GAO against his organisation saying: "Contrary to what the GAO report implies, Craigslist has more people actively engaged in its anti-fraud efforts than any Web site on earth," said Buckmaster.
"In addition to our in-house anti-fraud team numbering a dozen or more staff members, and the automated blocking and screening routines we have developed, Craigslist benefits from tens of millions of passionate users diligently reviewing every ad on the site, with each user having the power to delete inappropriate ads, which power they exercise to the tune of several million ads removed each month."
EBay Vice President Tod Cohen , testifying before the House National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee Thursday, said his company had more than 113 million items for sale at any given time and that military goods accounted for only around one-tenth of one percent of that number.
He said eBay works hard to keep prohibited goods off the site. "We created prohibited and restricted items policies and built tools using state-of-the-art technology to enforce those policies," he said.
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